Archive for April, 2010

Ghostly International has a new compilation coming out next week called Horizon Line which is a collection of classics and ten new, forthcoming, and unreleased songs. The tracklist includes these 2 FREE songs from Tycho and Mux Mool which Ghostly is giving away here. This will also be available in a 2xCD format inserted into a DVD-style case in May 2010, so enjoy the digital but the CD will definitely be a nice piece to have.

DOWNLOAD (right click and save):
FREE – Tycho – Adrift (Shigeto‘s Adrift A Dream Mix)
FREE – Mux Mool – Wolf Tone Symphony (Paul White Remix)
FREE – Mux Mool – Morning Strut (Shigeto‘s wakenbake edit)

As for the Morning Strut remix by Shigeto, it was offered today in the Ghostly newsletter which also included this great 1 minute video of Mux Mool being interviewed, I love the part about them asking if he has health insurance, I wish more musicians did shorts like these.

I am very excited about the work of Sulki & Min. I saw these on but does it float this morning and they jump-started my mind. I’ve been in a bit of a creative funk recently and these posters were just what I needed to get excited about design again. I’m not exactly sure what specifically it was, though I suspect the type lockup in the top right quadrant of the 2nd poster down may have had something to do with it.

I also love the subtle details in the first poster — the line weight of the circle around the D, the differences between the two fours — simple yes, but boring no. (I’m sure some may disagree with me on this, but I can’t help but admire the restraint/confidence it takes to call a poster like this finished.)

Sulki and Min are Korean designers who both got their MFA in design from Yale. They have an astonishing body of work and have been exhibited many times. I am also a big fan of a few of their typefaces designs.

via bdif

All I’ve ever wanted was an analog desk. Since I started recording it was my goal to someday have a 24 track analog mixer to work with. I’m still not there yet, but the stuff you see above keeps me dreaming. These are some examples of a new type of analog console that a few boutique manufacturers have been releasing in recent years. Most are compact, relatively inexpensive ($30-40k instead of $500k+) analog consoles. They tend to be scaled down versions of classic large format consoles from the pre-digital age (the Toft ATB, for example, is a mini Trident, which was also designed by Malcolm Toft)

As a designer I find myself obsessing over the visual aspects of my musical equipment. Sometimes I wonder which I love most, how the machines look, or what they do. While I do think these newer machines are beautiful, I miss the old style interfaces which have shifted quite a bit from their original forms (see an example of an older Neve below).

This got me thinking about how little these machines have changed over the years and how I dislike even the most minor of those changes. I’m always amazed at how a subtle order has emerged over the years in pro audio interface design. It’s sort of like the mouse on PCs; the metaphors and interaction models have remained essential unchanged since inception yet no one seems to mind. I guess it’s a testament to how thoughtful the designers who pioneered these systems really were. Either that or we’re just slaves to habit.

At any rate, it’s all just fun to think about. The reality is that I don’t really need a desk like this. I’m rarely recording more than two tracks at a time so I have four channels of Neve clones and a patchbay — it sort of acts like a modular 4-track console (minus the faders and cool meter bridge). The only thing these would really come in handy for would be as a summing bus during mixdown and I have places I can get that done (although I do prefer having everything in-house).

800Beloved‘s sophomore LP Everything Purple has matured leaps and bounds when it comes to an album flowing as a whole, Bouquet the debut album had many great tracks that I still listen to today yet didn’t have the tracklist that this LP(stream it in full here) has. As a constant listener of new post rock I feel like this LP has more depth than most these days with Sean Lynch literally living the lifestyle of what this album sounds like. I’ve been to his place each item you pick up has some kind of meaning and ties into this record somehow from his 14th Century Transylvanian casket in the living room to the J Crew catalog on the coffee table. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

If someone came up to me and told me: “I made this record and it sounds like about 100 instruments are looping” i’d be skeptical to think the album was any good but Warp‘s new signing Nice Nice makes it happen and makes it sound like its easy to do. Beautiful rhythms make this song one of kind and never do I feel like the song is out of their hands, super impressed with this.

Ever since I started making 4/4 material as early as 2002 I always wanted to make a song that gave off the same feeling like this Efdemin track. The key moment is the signature tone at 1:03, when it drops in you know its a Dial record, the air becomes warm around you and you’ve distanced yourself from everything in your peripheral vision, well at least that’s what its like for me.

Have you ever wanted a post rock song instrumental? well I think this Bell Hollow would be on my list, I just don’t know what to enjoy about the vocals yet the guitars and synth is really on point so I keep listening.

Joakim Faxvaag is a Norwegian lighting designer and visualist. He’s been traveling with Phoenix for the past year while constantly evolving the visual aspects of their shows. Joakim is using (among other things) the excellent modular video app VDMX — the same software that I use for visuals during the Tycho shows. To see what he’s been able to do with it is inspiring to say the least.

He lists his setup as follows: “custom quartz patches, 15000 ansi front projector, 6 x dl.2s, 6 x mac 700s, 10 x mac 2000s, 6 x atomics, mac pro running vdmx, kineme artdmx + grandma fullsize ++”. You can see some more examples at Joakim’s site.

One of the best beat records i’ve heard this year is this Free The Robots LP, it has the freshness of freedom in the studio and no pressure of having to be hype or head nodding just a great collection of tracks.

Tobacco has teamed up with Beck a couple of times on the new album Maniac Meat, the record reminds me of the first time I saw a Garbage Pail Kid card, it was harsh yet I couldn’t have enough.
UPDATE: Needed to take this down, sorry guys, i’ll have it up again around the release date

Before I post something from the new Delorean record I wanted to share this remix they did of Glasser, it touches on how a slow Cocorosie song would start off and its well worth sticking around for the firework going off breakdown that transitions back into the song, very clever.

Looping noise pop trio Growing has a new record coming out called Pumps!, its for fans of F*ck Buttons yet this is a bit more Black Dice like in my mind with it being more tense and dirty.

Pitchfork debuted Phantogram‘s Mouthful of Diamonds video which the couple are in a pretty nice cabin out in the woods and many odd things go down, I won’t spoil the fun.

You do not want to know how long I spent trying to rig a vertical stop motion set up this week. Duct tape was flying around everywhere, lights were falling and shattering from above, and I had to take at least one ‘cool down before I break something’ walk. Surprisingly, Google was unhelpful in providing useful solutions — though this may have had something to do with a confusion in terms (is it aerial stop motion? vertical? 90 degrees?) I never quite know what to classify it as.

Anyway, I’ve written this brief process post about how I set up everything. It worked great for me, but I do not intend this to be a “this is HOW you do it” type article. Classify this as a go-to “bootleg” option if you don’t have access to one of those crazy $10,000 rigs that lets you fly above your subject etc. If you are looking for a relatively easy and inexpensive way to complete this type of project, this is one way to do it. I’ll walk through the supplies and exactly what I did that worked best for me. At the end of the day, it’s actually pretty darn easy — but it’s always nice to get a peak at a successful process just in case you’re spinning your wheels. There probably is a better way to do this, but I couldn’t find one. (And do excuse the slightly blurry photograph above…unfortunately the camera that has the external flash capability was the one being photographed…)

And in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, this video is a GREAT example of this type of stop motion done extremely well.

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Aisle One posted earlier on this incredible Wim Crouwel Archive. The Het Geheugen van Nederland has generously archived over 500 of the Dutch master’s works. Break out your printers, you could probably get some decent prints out of some of these. I have his book but a lot of these are completely new to me.

Via Aisle One